Undeliverable

by Rebecca Demarest

  He was remembering the day that Benny was born. Jeannie had been too exhausted to stay awake, her strawberry hair limp on her hospital greens, emitting the soft half snores that had made him fall in love with her. He had held his hour-old son so he could see out the window.

  “See, Benjamin, Benny, my boy. That world is a great adventure. One quest after another. It’ll challenge you, but don’t worry, I’m right here. Always will be…”

  Ben started out of his daydream as a man in overalls slammed open the door of the building across from him, lighting a cigarette as he crossed the threshold. The man took a long drag before waving across the tracks to Ben, holding up his pack in offering.

  Wrinkling his nose, Ben shook his head and tapped his watch before hauling himself off the pile of ties and turning back toward his office. He took a couple more deep breaths of the Georgia fug before heading inside, somewhat calmer and determined to apologize to Sylvia. It wasn’t her fault she had found the picture and chosen to comment. He just wished he had managed to have kept it hidden. He’d forgotten it was in that box at all, to be honest, and he should have taken it home when he found it.

  She wasn’t in the warehouse or the sorting room, so he poked his head into the readers’ pen, gazing about at the moderate chaos of the room before ducking back out unnoticed. He finally found his way to the break room, a large conference-type room that doubled as the auction room.

  Sylvia sat on the raised platform that held the auctioneer’s podium, poking at a container of yogurt with a spoon. She frowned, scooped out a dollop of the thick, pink substance, and then flung it back into the container.

  “Be sure you don’t miss, doing that. I’d hate to have to be the one to clean yogurt out of the carpet.” She jumped and made as if to stand, but Ben put a hand on her shoulder and sat down beside her.

  “Ben, I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to go poking around like that, but the picture was right there, and I’m always too curious…”

  Ben held up a hand to stem the furious tide of apologies and rubbed his hands over his face. “Just, leave it alone, alright? I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then I’ll leave it alone.” Sylvia nodded shortly and picked up her uneaten yogurt. Jumping up, she hesitated before holding her hand down to him, “Do you want to go back to work now?” She didn’t seem nearly as miserable as when he’d first walked into the room, and he wondered if these mercurial changes in mood were standard, or if she had been truly that upset at causing him distress.

  She stood and dumped her yogurt into a bin, and then turned to him with a hand extended. Ben decided that the best way to keep her from getting nosy again would be to give her something else to think about for a while, so he grasped her hand and pulled himself upright. His mouth twisted into an involuntary smile as he nearly pulled her slight frame down on top of him, but they both ended up standing. “Back to work, yes. I was going to look in that safe, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, I think you were. Care to go see?”

  “Lead on.” He gave an abbreviated bow towards the door and followed Sylvia back to the warehouse. Treasure was a suitable distraction; girls liked shiny things, and they especially loved showing off shiny things. They stood in front of the safe for a moment before he leaned down toward her and whispered, “Fantastic jewels? Gold? Stocks and bonds? Do you know what the old lady kept in here?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes sparkled as she tried to suppress a grin and she looked up at him, meeting his eyes squarely. He noticed that they were an unusually clear green. “But I’m not telling. That would ruin the surprise.”

  Ben rolled his eyes and knelt once more before the old cast-iron safe and pulled it open. He peered in, his face blank, and he paused before he reached in and pulled something out, cradling it in his hand. “Huh.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re no fun! What kind of reaction is that, ‘huh’?” She pulled the door out of his grasp and let it swing fully open, and she bent over to look in and then down at his hand. “Huh.”

  Ben felt his stomach sink to the floor and hoped this was a hazing initiation for the new property clerk. He had enough problems; he didn’t want to complicate things at work, too. “Is the safe supposed to be almost empty?”

  “Um, no. I don’t think so. She used to keep all sorts of things in here.” She nodded at the rag doll in his hand. “She was terrified of that thing. It’s a voodoo doll, you know. Was mailed from New Orleans a few years back. Bunion thought it would do someone damage if it was messed with, so she kept it locked up in here. But there was also jewelry, a few valuable books, things like that.” She reached over Ben’s shoulder and patted down the shelves of the safe. “Nope, not here. Wonder if she put it all back on the shelves?” She bounded up and headed over to the next bay to start rummaging through the jewelry box.

  Ben gingerly placed the doll back in the empty safe and closed it, spinning the dial to clear the combination. Kind of like locking the barn door after the horses are gone, he reflected, but it was probably good to keep the voodoo doll in there. “Who should we report this to?” he called over to Sylvia.

  “Report this? I don’t know.” She looked up as Ben walked around the shelves. “Nothing’s ever gone missing before that I know of. I swear it was all here last week. I put an engagement ring in there with the rest of them.”

  “I haven’t finished the manual yet; do we have a ‘lost property’ file? It seems like the same woman who’d label books ‘rubbish’ might have an ‘incompetence’ file at the very least.” He ran a hand through his hair and shifted his weight back and forth, debating whether he should ask her if she took anything. He was thinking of the letter she had stuffed in her pocket the day before.

  Almost as if she had read his mind, she hunkered down and peered around the edges of the safe. “Well, I didn’t take it, you just learned about it, and the only other one who had the combo was Bunion. I guess we should figure out who we report this to.”

  “All I saw in the manual was long and detailed instructions about how to handle what is here, not what to do if something isn’t.” He frowned, then continued, “I’d have thought it’d be awfully hard to lose something here as this is where all the lost things come. Thought it might have a magnetic pull for the lost or something.”

  “No,” Sylvia ran a hand thoughtfully along a shelf. “No socks here, or hardly ever I should say, and, when we do, we almost always get matched pairs, so not everything lost ends up here.”

  “Just a little whimsy, I guess.” Ben went back to his cubicle and dragged the manual off his shelf, flipping it open to the contents page, trying to figure out which section might have the information they needed. “There’s just nothing here. I’m going to find someone who might know what to do. Can you keep looking through the bays, see if you recognize anything that’s supposed to be in the safe? I mean, since you probably handled some of it in the past.”

  She saluted, then spun on her heel and skipped back into the warehouse as Ben made his way to the reception desk.

  Judy sat at her desk, the phone clenched between her ear and shoulder as she typed away, searching through the lost mail index. “Five carats, you say? And he says he mailed it to you two weeks ago? No…no, I’m not seeing anything of that weight that’s come through here, ever. He didn’t insure it? Are you sure he sent it? No, no, there’s no reason to use that language, ma’am; I’m just checking. Of course I think he loves you; perhaps it will come in the next day or so, and, just in case it shows up here, we’ll put your information into the system. All right now, you have a better day then.” Judy dropped the phone into the cradle and rubbed her ear before turning to Ben. “Well now, I hope your boyfriend hasn’t sent you fictitious jewelry as well; I’m all out of platitudes.”

  “Does a safe-full of missing jewelry count?” He linked his hands behind his back, rocking onto his heels. “’Cause that�
��s what I seem to have.”

  “I haven’t time for silly jokes, Ben, so what’s up?”

  “The safe in long-term storage—it’s empty. Well, empty except for a voodoo doll. Sylvia says it was full. I now have two questions. Can you show me on that little software program of yours how I can look up where things are supposed to be stored, and who in the hell do I report it to if all that stuff is truly missing?”

  “You’ll have to ask Sylvia about that. Mrs. Biun had a unique way of...organizing that data. And I’d fill out an incident report form, if I were you. No one really to talk to directly about that sort of thing. Maybe the people who come from headquarters to run the auction? I’d bring it up with them next time they come.”

  “So you’re telling me I don’t know what’s missing in that warehouse, and I don’t have anyone to pass the buck to.” Ben grimaced, threw his hands in the air, and started back to the warehouse. “I won’t stand for it. Lost things don’t stay lost. They get found.”

  Judy’s laugh followed him back to the warehouse.

  Investigation

  An exciting aspect to be sure. We have almost unlimited resources when it comes to tracking down the proper owners. Of course, when I started here, I actually had to call offices all over the country to try and get the information I needed. That’s still the only way to do some things sometimes; technology simply cannot replace good solid legwork.

  ~ Gertrude Biun, Property Office Manual

  Ben found a copy of the incident report form in the back of his manual, filled it out, and gave it to the receptionist before spending the rest of the day shelving items and learning the computer system that tracked every piece of lost mail. This included not only the items at the Atlanta facility, but the Saint Paul, Minnesota, facility as well. Each item that came through his office had to have a description entered and as much of the addressee and return address as could be deciphered. It wasn’t as easy as it came across, however, for after the basic info was entered, there was an intricate protocol for handling the search for the item’s owners.

  At five o’clock, Ben shut down the computer and stretched, data spreads of cities dancing before his eyes. For once, he had actually managed to lose track of time, and he brushed off the vague guilt he felt at not having thought of his search for the last few hours. Learning his job was integral to continuing said search, he rationalized. Besides, he was just about to get back to it. He called a good evening to Sylvia as she had insisted on shelving the last set of items that night herself.

  She waved merrily, brandishing a partially melted spatula. “Have a good weekend! If you need anything, I don’t live too far from here. I’d be happy to show you around or something.”

  Ben smiled, imagining the scenario in which Sylvia had melted the spatula herself. It involved her trying to deep fry ice cream and not having a metal slotted spoon. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just spend this weekend settling in.”

  The short drive from the industrial park that housed the Mail Recovery Center to his apartment was delayed by an accident along the highway, and he was growling to himself in irritation by the time he reached his mail box. He grabbed the few envelopes waiting for him and continued up to his apartment, throwing the mail on the counter as he grabbed a beer from the fridge before sitting down at his desk. He flipped through the maps that he had marked up the night before and pulled out a legal pad to begin marking out his strategy for the weekend. There seemed to be a large number of tips called in around Grant Park and the zoo so he decided to focus his flyers around there. He kicked the lid off the paper box next to the desk and ran his hand across the stacks of flyers, his son’s face staring up from the cropped and enlarged beach photo.

  Ten years ago, when Ben had just graduated from high school and was trying to decide whether he could survive a school in the south long enough to get his library science degree, all he thought his future held was a long life in the stacks of a library somewhere. Maybe doing some restoration work, but mainly helping young readers find books to fire their imaginations. But then he had met Jeannie and they had a child together, and the librarian job he’d once envisioned began to seem like a very lonely kind of life to lead.

  When Jeannie’s father decided to retire and asked if they wanted to take over his antique shop, it had seemed like an idyllic life working every day beside the woman he loved in a shop filled with old junk and books. Constant antiquing trips, auctions, and conversations with older antiquarians and young couples looking to furnish their own first apartments.

  The phone rang and startled him into spilling his beer over the copies. “Damn!” He grabbed the top few sheets and waved them over the carpet to shake off as much beer as he could. Walking over to the kitchen counter, he dropped the flyers and picked up the receiver.

  “What? Who’s this?” He put down the beer and grabbed a paper towel, dabbing at the flyers and then the splash of beer on his pants.

  “It’s Sylvia, Ben. I just wanted to see if you needed any help getting settled in or anything. I hate moving. Figured a cheerful helper might be just what you need.”

  He took a moment to count to ten so he wouldn’t snap at her. He hated interruptions when he was settling in to work, it broke his concentration and he worried he might miss something. “Thanks, Sylvia.” He threw the balled up paper towels into the sink. “But I prefer to do this on my own. Plus, I’m kind of busy this weekend.”

  “I got it. That’s cool. Hey, at least you didn’t say you’d had enough of the cheerful helper already this week.” He made a face but didn’t comment. That would be one of the other reasons he’d prefer she not come over. Oh, and the wall full of the search for his son. He didn’t really want to explain that all to her. “Anyway, if you need anything, my number should be in the manual; there’s a company directory at the back of that. You know, all twenty-five of us or so.”

  “Got it. I will let you know if I need any help. Don’t you have plans of your own? A date or something?” He kicked himself for asking that last and then wondered at the fact that he actually wanted to know whether she was seeing someone.

  “Pssh. As if there are boys in this town worth the effort. Nah, I’ll just end up working in Gram’s yard again. It’s the great Garden-Patch War and apparently all hands are needed. You wouldn’t believe the amount of work that has to be put into that thing.”

  He looked over at his desk and the piles of paper, maps, and folders. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, thanks, Sylvia. You go find some fun this weekend, hear?”

  “Got it, boss. You too.”

  The next morning, Ben packed a satchel full of flyers along with duct tape and a staple gun with plenty of extra staples. He threw in a couple bottles of water and protein bars as well, having learned his lesson after one particularly unpleasant day in July when he ended up in the hospital after a day of canvassing the streets of Savannah. After three bags of fluid had been pumped into him, he lied about having someone to take care of him and was discharged to go back to his dank motel room. He grabbed his maps and keys and drove east into the city. Even at eight o’clock, the air was fouled with dust and smog, the temperature creeping past eighty. Ben knew he could cover one city block in about a half hour, and he was planning to be in the city until dark.

  He left his car in a rundown parking structure that promised all-day parking for ten dollars and set off in the direction of the park. His goal was to completely cover the park and the surrounding block of streets. Every telephone pole he passed, every boarded window or door, every blank wall received a poster. And it had to be every possible surface; every few feet he would stop and look back, making sure he had achieved maximum poster visibility. His heart leapt every time he noticed a space he had missed, and he would hurry back to fill it in, give it the face of his son.

  There was a sort of mantra or meditation to the work, step step staple, step step staple. The re
petition and the fact that he was doing something active, something that could bring in a hint of his son, helped him to relax more than anything else he did on his search. He worked steadily as the sun rose, stopping passersby to make sure they saw the picture. “Have you seen this boy? He’s five; my son.”

  He had stopped noticing what the people actually looked like. They were a blur of red and blue ties, dark suits, high heels, styled hair. Occasionally a detail would pop out in particular—a purple mohawk, a brightly patterned umbrella used as a walking stick, a violet muu-muu.

  “If you could for a moment, ma’am. Just a quick look; have you seen this boy?”

  They all passed by, most of them just shaking their head and not engaging. Some would just snatch the paper as they went by to glance at before tossing it in the trash or gutter within the next block. If it was salvageable, Ben would retrieve the poster, flatten it carefully, and post it farther down the block.

  “Have you seen my son? Benny?”

  Sometimes he wished that even one would stop for just a few seconds to take an honest look at the flyers he held and actually think about whether or not they had seen his son.

  “Maybe you’ve seen this boy around the park?”

  Mothers steered their flocks of children around him. Those were always the most painful. Fingers in their mouths, hands clasped to their mother’s pants leg, sitting in their strollers. Every one of them reminded him of something about Benny. He had the same dinosaur toys as the young African-American boy or he always insisted on mismatching shoes as a toddler, like the little girl in the stroller wearing one mini Sketcher and one mini sandal.